Senior Flight-Test Instrumentation Specialist

DCS Corp; Dayton (OH); On-site; USD 83,000 - 165,000; Part time

Job summary

ARCTOS a DCS company seeks a part-time Senior Instrumentation and Data Acquisition SME to support development, qualification, and flight testing of an instrumented structural panel. The role requires senior technician level expertise in aerospace flight-test instrumentation, sensor installation, signal conditioning, data acquisition, and environmental qualification testing.

The SME will collaborate with structural, aerothermal, instrumentation, modeling, and engineering teams to translate

Qualifications

• Requires U.S. Citizenship.
• 10+ years of experience with a Master's degree in mechanical/aeronautical engineering or related field.
• Experience supporting hypersonic/high-speed flight, missiles, launch vehicles, or other severe environment test programs.
• Experience instrumenting thin structural panels or structures under combined aerodynamic, thermal, vibration and acoustic environments.
• Familiarity with high temperature instrumentation and installation techniques.
• Experience with high channel count and/or high sample rate flight data acquisition systems.
• Experience with instrumentations systems constrained by vehicle power, bandwidth, telemetry and onboard storage.
• Familiarity with MIL-STD-810/MIL-STD-461 or program-specific environmental qualification requirements.
• Experience supporting test readiness reviews, instrument readiness reviews, qualification testing, and flight readiness activities.
• Extensive hands-on experience as a senior aerospace instrumentation technician or equivalent.

Responsibilities

• Support development of the panel instrumentation and data acquisition approach, including sensor selection, placement, installation methods, wiring, signal conditioning, sampling requirements, and channel allocation.
• Provide hands-on technical expertise for installation and integration of instrumentation on structural panels and flight hardware.
• Support instrumentation including strain, temperature, static and dynamic pressure, acceleration/vibration, and other measurements required to characterize the panel and its flight environment.
• Support integration of instrumentation with vehicle data acquisition, power, telemetry, and onboard data-storage systems.
• Evaluate instrumentation requirements against power, channels, sampling rates, bandwidth, and onboard storage capacity, and support trades.
• Develop and/or review instrumentation drawings, wiring diagrams, sensor installation procedures, channel lists, calibration requirements, and checkout procedures.
• Support sensor calibration, end-to-end channel verification, troubleshooting, and data-quality assessment.
• Assist with planning and execution of environmental qualification and acceptance testing of the instrumented panel and hardware.
• Provide expertise for vibration, shock, EMI/EMC, thermal, and other applicable flight-environment qualification testing.
• Assess instrumentation performance before, during, and after environmental testing to identify issues.
• Support ground testing, vehicle integration, pre-flight checkout, flight-test readiness activities, and post-flight instrumentation assessment.
• Provide practical recommendations for improving instrumentation reliability, maintainability and data quality for subsequent flight tests.

Skills

Aerospace instrumentation

Sensor installation

Data acquisition systems

Signal conditioning

EMI/EMC

Troubleshooting hardware

Flight-test support

End-to-end instrumentation

High-temperature instrumentation

Wire harnessing & connectors

Education

Master's degree in mechanical/aerospace engineering

Job description

ARCTOS a DCS company seeks a part-time Senior Instrumentation and Data Acquisition SME to support development, qualification, and flight testing of an instrumented structural panel. The role requires senior technician level expertise in aerospace flight-test instrumentation, sensor installation, signal conditioning, data acquisition, and environmental qualification testing.

The SME will collaborate with structural, aerothermal, instrumentation, modeling, and engineering teams to translate